| Author | Message | | Guest | | Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2003 10:10 pm Post subject: Beyond Regime Change, new 'old' Sykes-Picot agreement |
| Beyond Regime Change, new 'old' Sykes-Picot agreement
The Bush administration doesn't simply want to oust Saddam Hussein. It wants to redraw the Mideast map.
Key policymakers are motivated by twin hopes: to control oil and to protect Israel.
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available at LATimes (free registration)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq6dec06.story
By Sandy Tolan
BERKELEY -- If you want to know what the administration has in mind for Iraq, here's a hint: It has less to do with weapons of mass destruction
than with implementing an ambitious U.S. vision to redraw the map of the Middle East.
The new map would be drawn with an eye to two main objectives: controlling
the flow of oil and ensuring Israel's continued regional military
superiority. The plan is, in its way, as ambitious as the 1916 Sykes-Picot
agreement between the empires of Britain and France, which carved up the
region at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The neo-imperial vision, which
can be ascertained from the writings of key administration figures and
their co- visionaries in influential conservative think tanks, includes not
only regime change in Iraq but control of Iraqi oil, a possible end to the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and newly compliant
governments in Syria and Iran -- either by force or internal rebellion.
For the first step -- the end of Saddam Hussein -- Sept. 11 provided the
rationale. But the seeds of regime change came far earlier. "Removing
Saddam from power," according to a 1996 report from an Israeli think tank
to then-incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was "an important
Israeli strategic objective." Now this has become official U.S. policy,
after several of the report's authors took up key strategic and advisory
roles within the Bush administration. They include Richard Perle, now chair
of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; Douglas Feith, undersecretary of
defense; and David Wurmser, special assistant in the State Department. In
1998, these men, joined by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (now the top
two officials in the Pentagon), Elliott Abrams (a senior National Security
Council director), John Bolton (undersecretary of State) and 21 others
called for "a determined program to change the regime in Baghdad."
After removing Hussein, U.S. forces are planning for an open-ended
occupation of Iraq, according to senior administration officials who spoke
to the New York Times. The invasion, said Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya,
would be "a historic opportunity that is as large as anything that has
happened in the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman Empire." Makiya
spoke at an October "Post-Saddam Iraq" conference attended by Perle and
sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute.
Any occupation would certainly include protecting petroleum installations.
Control of the country's vast oil reserves, the second largest in the world
and worth nearly $3 trillion at current prices, would be a huge strategic
prize. Some analysts believe that additional production in Iraq could drive
world prices down to as low as $10 a barrel and precipitate Iraq's
departure from OPEC, possibly undermining the cartel. This, together with
Russia's new willingness to become a major U.S. oil supplier, could
establish a long-sought counterweight to Saudi Arabia, still the biggest
influence by far on global oil prices. It would be consistent with the plan
released by Vice President Dick Cheney's team in June, which underscored
"energy security" as central to U.S. foreign policy. "The Gulf will be a
primary focus of U.S. international energy policy," the report states.
Some analysts prefer to downplay the drive to control Iraqi oil. "It is
fashionable among anti-American circles ... to assume that U.S. foreign
policy is driven by commercial considerations," said Patrick Clawson, an
oil and policy analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
in an October talk. Rather, Clawson said, oil "has barely been on the
administration's horizon in considering Iraq policy.... U.S. foreign policy
is not driven by concern for promoting the interests of specific U.S. firms."
Yet Clawson, whose institute enjoys close ties with the Bush
administration, was more candid during a Capitol Hill forum on a post-
Hussein Iraq in 1999: "U.S. oil companies would have an opportunity to make
significant profits," he said. "We should not be embarrassed about the
commercial advantages that would come from a re-integration of Iraq into
the world economy. Iraq, post-Saddam, is highly likely to be interested in
inviting international oil companies to invest in Iraq. This would be very
useful for U.S. oil companies, which are well positioned to compete there,
and very useful for the world's energy-security situation."
Indeed, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi, whose close ties with
Perle, Wurmser, Rumsfeld and Cheney predate the current Bush
administration, met recently with U.S. oil executives. Afterward, Chalabi,
the would-be "Iraqi Karzai" and the hawks' long-standing choice to lead a
post-Hussein Iraq, made it clear he would give preference to an American-
led oil consortium. He also suggested that previous deals -- totaling tens
of billions of dollars for Russia's Lukoil and France's TotalFinaElf --
could be voided.
Next month, key Iraqi exiles will meet with oil executives at an English
country retreat to discuss the future of Iraqi petroleum. The conference,
sponsored by the Center for Global Energy Studies and chaired by Sheik Zaki
Yamani, the former Saudi oil minister, will feature Maj. Gen. Wafiq
Samarrai, the former head of Iraqi military intelligence, and former Iraqi
Oil Minister Fadhil Chalabi, now executive director of the center.
Fadhil Chalabi estimates that total oil reserves in Iraq could exceed Saudi
Arabia's and that daily production one day could reach 10 million barrels,
making it the world's largest producer. Hence, on the center's conference
agenda is a discussion of Iraq as a "second Saudi Arabia," and the prospect
of a world without OPEC. Oil executives and analysts heading to the country
retreat will also be able to purchase the center's 800-page analysis of the
prospects for exploration in Iraq. The cost: $52,500.
But taking over Iraq and remaking the global oil market is not necessarily
the endgame. The next steps, favored by hard-liners determined to elevate
Israeli security above all other U.S. foreign policy goals, would be to
destroy any remaining perceived threat to the Jewish state: namely, the
regimes in Syria and Iran.
"The War Won't End in Baghdad," wrote the American Enterprise Institute's
Michael Ledeen in the Wall Street Journal. In 1985, as a consultant to the
National Security Council and Oliver North, Ledeen helped broker the
illegal arms-for-hostages deal with Iran by setting up meetings between
weapons dealers and Israel. In the current war, he argues, "we must also
topple terror states in Tehran and Damascus."
In urging the expansion of the war on terror to Syria and Iran, Ledeen does
not mention Israel. Yet Israel is a crucial strategic reason for the
hard-line vision to "roll back" Syria and Iran -- and another reason why
control of Iraq is seen as crucial. In 1998, Wurmser, now in the State
Department, told the Jewish newspaper Forward that if Ahmad Chalabi were in
power and extended a no-fly, no-drive zone in northern Iraq, it would
provide the crucial piece for an anti-Syria, anti-Iran bloc. "It puts Scuds
out of the range of Israel and provides the geographic beachhead between
Turkey, Jordan and Israel," he said. "This should anchor the Middle East
pro-Western coalition."
Perle, in the same 1998 article, told Forward that a coalition of
pro-Israeli groups was "at the forefront with the legislation with regard
to Iran. One can only speculate what it might accomplish if it decided to
focus its attention on Saddam Hussein." And Perle, Wurmser and Feith (now
in the Pentagon), in their 1996 Israeli think tank report to Netanyahu,
argued for abandoning efforts for a comprehensive peace in favor of a
policy of "rolling back" Syria to protect Israel's interests.
Now, however, Israel is given a lower profile by those who would argue for
rollback. Rather, writes Ledeen, U.S. troops would be put at risk in order
to "liberate all the peoples of the Middle East." And this, he argues,
would be virtually pain-free: "If we come to Baghdad, Damascus and Tehran
as liberators, we can expect overwhelming popular support."
Perle concurs on Iraq -- "The Arab World ... will consider honor and
dignity has been restored" -- as well as Iran: "It is the beginning of the
end for the Iranian regime."
Now, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has joined the call against
Tehran, arguing in a November interview with the Times of London that the
U.S. should shift its focus to Iran "the day after" the Iraq war ends.
The vast ambition of such changes to the Middle Eastern map would seem an
inherent deterrent. But it is precisely this historical sweep, reminiscent
of Sykes-Picot and the British arrival in Iraq in 1917, that many close to
the administration seek. Publicly, Perle and Ledeen cling to the fantasy
that American troops would be welcomed in Baghdad, Tehran and Damascus with
garlands of flowers. Yet they are too smart to ignore the rage across the
Arab and Muslim worlds that would surely erupt in the wake of war on
multiple Middle Eastern fronts.
Indeed, the foreshadowing is already with us: in Bali, in Moscow, in Yemen
and on the streets of Amman. It's clear that even in Jordan, a close ally
of the U.S., the anger at a U.S. attack on Iraq could be hard to contain.
Indeed, the hard-liners in and around the administration seem to know in
their hearts that the battle to carve up the Middle East would not be won
without the blood of Americans and their allies. "One can only hope that we
turn the region into a caldron, and faster, please," Ledeen preached to the
choir at National Review Online last August. "That's our mission in the war
against terror."
Sandy Tolan, an I.F. Stone Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at
UC Berkeley, reports frequently on the Middle East. Jason Felch, a student
in Tolan's "Politics and Petroleum" class, contributed to this article.
Source: Los Angeles Times | |  | | Guest | | | | Guest | | Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2003 10:34 pm Post subject: Radical JINSA Zionists have Hijacked US Government for War |
| Ledeen (who is mentioned above) is a JINSA (Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs) Zionist extremist who wants an attack on Iran as well (as mentioned via the following article which is a MUST READ):
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest&c=1 | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2003 10:44 pm Post subject: Re: Robert Fisk: Looming War is about OIL |
|
Fisk needs to get his oil changed. That whining sound he makes seems to be getting louder. | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2003 11:06 pm Post subject: Re: Robert Fisk: Looming War is about OIL |
|
Oil and Israel?
Aren't you forgetting...
Imperialism
Colonialism
Personal revenge
Capitalism
And of course my personal favorite, WMD? | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
